Introducing The itel RS4: A Budget-Friendly Gaming Smartphone
The itel RS4 has entered the market as a gaming-focused smartphone that aims to provide impressive hardware at an affordable price. At first glance, it offers similar specifications to its competitors while costing significantly less. Here are some specifications and details about the itel RS4’s capabilities.
Design and Construction
The design of the itel RS4 is undeniably reminiscent of the Realme 12 series, evoking a sense of familiarity. However, the Silvery White and Lurex Black colour options showcase a distinct design and pattern on the rear. The device’s plastic frame feels cool and carries a slightly chunky appearance, despite its 8.15mm thickness.
The itel RS4 has a USB Type-C port at the bottom, along with a primary microphone, a 3.5mm audio port, and the main speaker grill. The top houses the second stereo speakers, while the left side features the SIM card slot. On the right side, you’ll find the power button and volume rocker.
Conveniently embedded within the power button is a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, providing ease of use, responsiveness, and accuracy. While face unlock is available, we found the fingerprint sensor to be preferable. The SIM card slot impresses with three trays: two for nano SIM cards and one dedicated to a microSD card.
The front of the itel RS4 boasts a spacious 6.56-inch LCD panel with a punch-hole housing the 8MP front camera. Although the presence of glass protection is not explicitly mentioned, a pre-installed screen protector provides some assurance.
Display, Multimedia, and Biometrics
The itel RS4 has a 6.56-inch display, but some people might not be impressed because it has a lower resolution and pixel density compared to other phones. However, it does have a special feature called a 120Hz refresh rate, which makes scrolling and animations smoother. You can choose between three options for the refresh rate depending on your preference and how much battery you want to use.
The screen’s brightness is okay for everyday use, but it might be harder to see in bright sunlight or outdoors.
The itel RS4 has stereo speakers, with one at the top and one at the bottom. The sound is average, and it’s loud enough for listening to music or playing games. If you want better audio, you can connect wireless earbuds using Bluetooth or use the headphone jack to connect headphones or speakers.
To unlock the phone, you can use the fingerprint sensor on the power button or use your face to unlock it.
Camera
The itel RS4 doesn’t have a strong camera. It has one main camera with a 50MP sensor, but it’s not clear how good the AI camera is. The main camera can record videos in 2K resolution at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps. However, it doesn’t have optical video stabilization, so the videos might not look very clear, even in well-lit places.
The camera app on the phone has features like bokeh, which can make the background blurry, and an ultra-steady mode to reduce shakiness in photos. There’s also an Ultimate Video Enhancement feature that helps make videos more stable and smooth. The front camera is 8MP and takes decent selfies.
OS, Apps, and UI
The itel RS4 comes with Android 13 as the operating system, and itel OS 13.5 is added on top of it.
Along with the usual apps you find on Android phones, itel has added its own apps to the RS4. These include Palm Store, Hola browser, AI Gallery, AHA Games, My Health, WOW FM, and Visha Player.
One interesting feature is the FM tuner, which you can access through the WOW FM Player app. To use it, you need to connect the phone to a 3.5mm cable. Then, you can listen to FM radio stations through earbuds or external speakers.
Some apps that come pre-installed, like TikTok and Shopee, might be considered unnecessary. But apart from those, there aren’t many other extra apps included. You can customize the phone by changing themes and icons to your liking.
Performance and Benchmarks
The itel RS4 uses a special kind of chip called the Mediatek Helio-G99 Ultimate. This chip is not very common, and only one other phone, the POCO M6 Pro, uses it. The Helio-G99 Ultimate chip is made using a technology called 6nm process. It has two powerful cores called Arm Cortex-A76 running at 2.2GHz, and six smaller cores called Arm Cortex-A55 running at 2.0GHz. It also has a graphics processor called Mali-G77 MC9 for handling graphics in games and apps.
For everyday tasks, the itel RS4 works well. It can open apps quickly, handle multiple tasks at once, and navigate smoothly without any delays. However, when it comes to playing demanding games or using apps that need a lot of power, the phone might struggle and not work as well.
Yugatech did some tests to see how well the itel RS4 could handle games. They used benchmarks like AnTuTu and Geekbench 5 to measure its performance. In the AnTuTu test, the phone scored around 270,000, which means it falls into the middle range compared to other phones. In the Geekbench 5 test, it got a score of 550 for how well it can do tasks using only one core, and a score of 1600 for tasks that use multiple cores.
Gaming Performance
The itel RS4 is a good choice for people who want an affordable smartphone for playing games without spending too much money. It can handle popular games like PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile, but you might need to set the graphics to low or medium settings. However, if you try to play more demanding games like Genshin Impact, you may notice that the game doesn’t run as smoothly and the graphics might not look as good. When you play games for a long time, the phone might get warm, especially near the camera and the top of the phone. But don’t worry, this is normal and it shouldn’t cause any problems while you’re playing.
Battery Life and Charging
The itel RS4 has a big battery that has a capacity of 5,000mAh. That’s enough power to keep the phone working for a whole day, even if you use it quite a bit. You can use it for things like going on the internet, using social media, and playing games now and then. When you need to charge the phone, it supports something called “18W fast charging.” But here’s the thing: the charger that comes with the phone can only charge at 10W, which is slower. So if you want to charge the phone faster, you’ll need to buy a separate charger that can charge at 18W.
Storage and Connectivity
The itel RS4 has a good amount of storage inside, with 128GB of space. But wait, there’s more! The phone also has a special slot where you can put a microSD card to add even more storage. You can add up to 512GB of extra space with a microSD card.
When it comes to connectivity, the itel RS4 has some useful features. It can hold two SIM cards at the same time, which is handy if you have two phone numbers or if you want to use different networks. It also supports something called 4G LTE, which means you can have fast internet when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi.
Speaking of Wi-Fi, the phone has that too, so you can connect to wireless networks for browsing the internet. It also has Bluetooth 5.0, which lets you connect to other devices like headphones or speakers wirelessly. If you need to find your way around, the phone has GPS to help you navigate. Lastly, it has a special port called USB Type-C, which you can use to transfer data from the phone to a computer or to charge the phone.
